Page 31 of Waves (Tangled Crowns #6)

Raj

I had never sat in vigil before. Never stood at the foot of someone’s bed with hopelessness and hope both winding my fingers into fists.

Avia lay on a narrow mattress in the closest house to the field, some cave-like monstrosity carved into the mountain where her guards had rushed her. Two ghastly lavender lights floated near the ceiling, making her eyelashes look like quill scratches against paper because her skin was so ashen.

Her witch fed her potion after potion from a stark black bag, but none of them had shown any effect yet.

I stared at my queen, her soft hair splayed out over the pillow and spilling down the sides of the bed. Her chest rose and fell weakly, as weak as the trembling beat of my own heart.

Every single breath she took felt linked to my own.

My ring sat uselessly on my finger because I doubted my ability to make the right wish in this situation.

I couldn’t restore Avia to what she’d been—a wish couldn’t restore the past. And that was the only thing I wanted to do.

I wanted her just as she was before… because she’d been perfect. The idea of making a wish that had unintended consequences paralyzed me. The love wish had backfired—had it been the elven chain or my wording? Or was my control over my magic more tenuous than I’d ever believed?

Knowing Avia’s precarious grasp on her own magic left me second-guessing things I’d taken for granted for centuries. Or perhaps worry was doing that. Undermining me.

Other wishes crowded my head, wishes that had nothing to do with magic.

I wished I’d seen past my need for revenge sooner.

I wished I’d realized earlier that her sliver of darkness was the perfect shade of gray to compliment my black heart.

I wished I’d kissed her again.

Unvoiced regrets bubbled up inside my throat and I swallowed them down before they swelled up into something more—like tears.

Mateo came into the room slowly, his head bandaged.

Unlike me, the silver-haired mer showed no restraint.

Immediately, he swam up to the left side of the bed, sitting and then laying, huddled against Avia’s side, cradling her.

He pressed a kiss to her forehead and began to cry.

In soft whispers, he begged Avia not to leave him.

The rims of my eyes started to burn.

By the head of the bed, Felipe stood sentinel, as he had since we’d arrived, having exchanged his mer fin for legs.

He looked the part of Avia’s guard with the spear he held, gripping the weapon so tightly that I was certain it was helping keep him upright.

The tension radiating off of him felt akin to my own.

The witch rubbed a thick lotion onto my queen’s torn wing, tracing slowly over each ripped piece, sealing the wounds, but unable to do more per her own admission.

“Wings are too delicate. And not enough creatures have them for me to have learned much magic about them. Maybe if there were fairies down here, they’d know, but I don’t,” Lizza over-explained as she applied the ointment. Tried to justify her incompetence.

As if any of us gave a goddamn about her wings when Avia’s eyes hadn’t opened yet.

The impulse to blast the witch rolled through me but I smacked it away because she was currently the only chance Avia had.

I wanted to ask when she’d wake up, but my throat ratcheted tight.

The door opened again behind me, and Sahar came in supporting Keelan.

The siren had even more bandages on him than Mateo did.

He limped, and there was a wrapping that spanned his chest, as if he’d broken some ribs.

Shirtless and sore as he certainly was, he still practically pulled his mother forward until he reached the foot of Avia’s bed.

Skirting around me, he sat with a pained gasp at her feet. Sahar bent over him in worry.

“Are you alright?” she whispered roughly. “You shouldn’t have?—”

“Is she going to be okay?” The siren ignored his mother and stared at Lizza, asking in a steady tone that made my opinion of him increase ever so slightly.

He knew what was most important.

Avia.

And while the selfish, cruel part of me didn’t want to share her—I knew I wasn’t what was best for her.

I might break her.

I’d wanted to do that. Even a few hours ago, I’d fantasized about her tears. But now, on the brink of losing her…I realized that the cruel fantasy was just that. A fantasy.

Lizza’s rotting face glanced up and I couldn’t tell the nature of her expression, probably because her muscles have decayed. But then she bit what was left of her lip. “I don’t know.”

Her words sucked all the oxygen from the water and the four of us held our collective breath.

All eyes turned to gaze at the unconscious sea sprite, sprawled on the bed, breathing what might have been her final breaths.

No.

Without consciously meaning to, my legs were driven forward. Bypassing Keelan and Sahar, I walked to the head of the bed. My heart thrummed harder than before, drawn to Avia. Staring down at her pale cheeks, the tiny glittering scales on them only highlighted her beauty.

Like the moon in the presence of the sun, I felt both eclipsed and utterly captivated at the same time—drawn in by her gravity, with no choice but to orbit.

She was everything.

I should have told her.

My hand reached out and I traced the line of her jaw, gazed at the soft sweep of her lashes. She looked almost peaceful enough that one could believe she was just asleep.

All of a sudden, visions of the future—tiny moments—flickered through my head, each one distinct and fluttering, like leaves in a breeze.

Avia’s smile. Her hand in mine. Floating on the surface of the waves together, perched on driftwood and admiring the sunset.

A child’s shriek and a shared smile—an inside joke.

A slow walk through the kelp forest. Our hands together, gripping a knife and sliding it across a man’s neck in perfect unison.

Tiny moments.

Things I never wanted before.

Things that had seemed too small and insignificant. Worthless, but only because I didn’t know then what it was like.

I didn’t know what it was like to have one’s heart swell at someone else’s smile. To have one’s blood rush at the thought of someone else’s pain. I’d shielded my djinn body from any of that centuries ago, seeing only vulnerability. Not recognizing those moments as life’s true treasures.

But then, all my tiny visions—those imaginary moments that I wanted to collect so desperately—blew away, dead leaves struck down by the wind as Avia’s breathing stuttered.

Desperation flooding my veins, I bent down until my face hovered just over hers. My heart rate accelerated, urgency driving it. “Don’t you dare leave. I’m not done with you.”

And then I kissed her.